In Between
by HoVis
Summary: In between losing Rose and finding Martha, the Doctor argues with the TARDIS, encounters a few interesting people, and learns to accept his own need for companionship. Please read and review!


**A/N:** Hello everyone! What follows is my little idea of what happened between the Doctor losing Rose and finding Martha. It is also based heavily on my own, um, artistic interpretation of the TARDIS as a character itself. I also refer to the one of the only 'pre-nine' episodes I have seen later on in the fic with the appearance of the Silurians. The Silurians were cave-dwelling creatures in the Third Doctor's time who actually pre-dated man as inhabitants of Earth. A threatened Brigadier blew them all up... hope that is an ok summary for anyone who hasn't seen the older episodes. Please bear with me in this, um, rather long 'what if...' story!

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Doctor Who, and at the age of fifteen I don't think I'm old enough to have an contractual rights anyway. The Rijians were my creation, and I'm only saying that because I don't want to spoil the reputation of the Doctor Who people who are actually good at inventing aliens...!

**In Between**

The Doctor met a few... _interesting_ people after Rose's departure from his dimension. The TARDIS, of course, had known exactly where to take him to draw him out of his low – the wily old girl had known exactly how to rekindle his love of all things troublesome or dangerous.

First, of course, had been that thing with the 'runaway bride', which had to some extent distracted the Doctor from his troubles a little, but when he had returned the bride (the bride, for heavens sake, how much more _domestic_ could you get?) to her family and returned to _his_ family, the TARDIS, he had still leant against the door and said loudly;

"She couldn't replace Rose. No one could." Just in case the TARDIS had been getting ideas about a new companion. From now on, he would travel alone – it was just safer, for his two hearts, that way.

The TARDIS had given a little grumble in response, and the Doctor set her to cruise. But whilst he allowed the balm of the Time Vortex to wash over him, the TARDIS – like him, the only survivor of its kind – began to plot.

888

The TARDIS rumbled as it began to land, and the Doctor sat up sharply in the old-fashioned armchair he had found stored somewhere in the depths of the TARDIS. It was an incredibly comfortable old thing but also lime green in colour – his fourth incarnation, he recalled – which was probably why the TARDIS had hidden it in such an obscure corner. With some reluctance (he rarely slept, but he did enjoy it when he did – rather like an insomniac teenager) he followed the maze of corridors into the control room, and gave a sigh as the motor column settled once more into place.

"Now, listen here, old girl." He said, as the lights flickered on and off in excitement. "I know what you're trying to do, and it _won't work_." The TARDIS gave an indignant moan, to which the Doctor was about to respond when he heard a hammering on the door.

"Officer! Let us in!" The voice was panicked, desperate. Danger was obviously just around the corner. To which the TARDIS responded accordingly, by opening the door and letting that danger walk right in.

Two out of breath young men burst into the interior of what they thought was just a police box, and stared.

888

They were now sitting round the control panel drinking tea out of china cups. The Doctor had thought the young men, pale as they were, could probably do with a few tannins.

"And you would be...?" He asked them, smiling in what he thought was a reassuring way. Strangely, that smile seemed to terrify the two young men more than anything else. He _tsked_ impatiently. "Come on, I haven't got all day... I didn't even mean to come here, so you two are just an inconvenient accident which I would rather get through as quickly as possible, so -?" The old chattiness was still there, but there was also a hardness he knew Rose had never heard from him – at least, not from _him_, from his ninth regeneration, perhaps...

_The loss of her is as great as the loss of a world._

The thought shocked him somewhat; that he mourned Rose with perhaps more fervour (yet she was still _alive_!) than he mourned his poor, betrayed Gallifrey. It was a thought, unpleasant as it was, which needed dwelling on, but the darker-haired of the two boys chose that moment to at last respond, so it would have to be left for a later date.

"We're... nobody." He said. "We were just at a party – things went... wrong, knives were pulled, things got dangerous – we were just in – in the wrong place. We ran away, looking for a bobby and found... this place." He shrugged helplessly and fell silent.

The Doctor was about to berate him for giving such a long-winded answer and yet not supplying his name when the thought struck him that such an answer probably told him more about the two young men than a thing as simple and intangible as a pair of names. What did a name mean, after all? Did it define a person? And yet he, the Doctor, had denied _his_ name for a title which forever had people asking 'doctor - - _who?_'

The other young man, his hair a sandy blonde colour, piped up helpfully at this point;

"My name's George. And he's Lennie."

The Doctor's lips quirked involuntarily at this.

"Got any rabbits with you?"

The two men shared looks of deep incredulity which clearly spelt that they believed they had wandered into the domain of a madman. The Doctor felt an urge to laugh, a thing he had not done for some time.

"Oh, to be uneducated." He said, before rising and looking down at his two guests with his fingers steepled, like a schoolmaster. "Any questions?"

Lennie glanced at George, and shrugged. The Doctor smiled at the irony of it. Life imitating art, indeed.

"It's bigger..." Lennie began.

"On the inside..." George filled in.

"Than on the outside, yes, _thank_you, top marks for observation." The Doctor finished for them, feeling suddenly impatient. Whatever the TARDIS had had in mind in bringing him here, it certainly wasn't working. These two were in no way companion material.

Then he realised that he had been thinking of replacing Rose, and hastily shut the thought away. He preferred to be alone, anyway.

888

He managed to get rid of the pair in the end, by adding a little strength to their second cup of tea (thank heavens for Sontaran Ale – awful species, excellent brewers) to cheer them up and then leading them to a _real_ bobby to report... whatever it was had happened to them before they arrived at the TARDIS. The Doctor had felt distinctly like a babysitter, and had re-entered the TARDIS with a disgruntled air.

"What on Gallifrey did you do that for, old girl?" He muttered as he stalked to the steering column. The TARDIS gave a little, pathetic moan, and he tutted. "You got _lost_ again?" The Doctor paused. Perhaps, after all, the two young men had been just what he had needed. Little trouble with absolutely no strings attached. Just... companionship. Something to ward off the loneliness.

He wrenched the handbrake up and set the TARDIS to autopilot.

"I don't need companionship. I'm _not_ lonely." He said stubbornly.

The TARDIS gave only a non-commitant rumble.

888

The Doctor put his hands on his hips and gazed at the console with its stationary motor column staring down at him in testament to the TARDIS' will of its own.

"All right, old girl, where are we now?"

The console bleeped, and the Doctor, curious if only to alleviate his growing boredom in the empty TARDIS, leaned forward to read the co-ordinates on the monitor. _Earth. March 1807 AD. London._

Throwing an amused glance up to the heavens, the Doctor strode out of the TARDIS' doors... and straight into the Houses of Parliament. Half a dozen guards, bemused and heavily armed, stepped forward and the Doctor fixed his best 'harmless' smile.

_Old girl, you've really outdone yourself for parking this time..._

"Good afternoon, officers." He said cheerily, placing his hands behind his back. Not only was it an easy, open posture to take, it also allowed him to slip his sonic screwdriver, which he had taken from his pocket, up the sleeve of his jacket for easy access later on. Though he doubted a sonic screwdriver would really be much use against the somewhat heavy ornamental maces the guards were carrying. They _were_ just for show, weren't they...?

"Easy does it," the Doctor said lightly as one took his arm and began, without a single word, to roughly 'escort' him out of the small alcove which the TARDIS had found. Police officers the Time Vortex over, they were all the same – no common courtesy whatsoever.

He was led through a maze of corridors, all deserted, until, at the sound of distant and euphoric cheering, the guards stopped. They were standing in a wide hall and, at the other end, a crowd of men both young and old were sweeping down towards them.

"Wait," the Doctor said, "what date is this?" The guards ignored him. "1807... what happened in 1807, come on..." As his knowledge of Earth history at last creaked into action the Doctor felt a huge grin spread across his face. "1807! Abolition of the slave trade! Fantastic! So that would mean..."

The crowd had reached the guards and their time-travelling prisoner and one, a small, tired-looking man stepped forward, whilst some in the crowd stopped with him and others continued to flood past, heading most likely for the nearest watering hole. The man laid tired but somehow relieved eyes upon the Doctor, and smiled slightly.

"Who are you?" He asked, ignoring the guards' shuffles of discomfort. "And what have you done to find yourself in such a situation?"

"He was trespassing, sir," one of the guards, evidently unable to control himself, and gave the Doctor's arm and extra hard squeeze just for good measure. The Doctor winced, and the man frowned at the guard.

"And why were you trespassing, sir?" The man asked him, and the Doctor did not fail to notice the emphasis placed on the title, a respectful term to a man placed in irons. He also spoke directly to the prisoner, and not his guards. The Doctor smiled slightly and paused carefully before choosing his next words.

"I wished to discover the outcome of the Bill, sir." He said, and watched a slow smile spread across the man's face.

"Release this man, sirs." He said to the guards, who exchanged dubious looks. But the small crowd around the group began to offer their assent too and, in the way of all democracies, the guards were forced to begrudgingly release the Doctor's shackles and slink away, though not before sending the Doctor an extremely venomous look. The man frowned in concern at the red marks on the Doctor's wrists where the metal had dug into them. "I hope you are not in pain, sir?"

The Doctor grinned.

"Nothing that won't heal." He looked round at the flushed, excited faces, and did his best to play ignorant. "Well? The Bill? Did it go through?"

The group of men let out something that was halfway between a laugh and a cheer. One of them slapped the smaller man on the back. He gave a sheepish smile.

"Yes, it did. Thank God." He uttered the final two words with a total piety, and the Doctor knew that he really _did_ thank God for the victory. Of course, it would be out of the question to take him for a spin in the TARDIS... it might change his view of the God of his Earth, which might affect what he did later in life...

So the Doctor contented himself with taking the small, great man's hand and shaking it warmly.

"Congratulations," he said, "Congratulations, Mr Wilberforce."

Ten minutes later he was back in the TARDIS, having turned down the offer of a drink, and suddenly burst out laughing.

"Old girl," he said, "I just seriously considered taking on _William Wilberforce_ as a companion."

The TARDIS gave a grumble that was almost a chuckle. And the Doctor cranked the motor lever, at last genuinely anticipating wherever the old girl was intending to take him next.

888

The Doctor was surprised to find, when the TARDIS next landed, that whilst they had travelled inn time they had scarcely moved in terms of _space_. What on earth was the strange attraction between his TARDIS and the planet Earth?

"We spent a long time there," he murmured, "many years ago." The TARDIS was not – well, she was no ordinary vehicle, and as such, being tied as he was to one planet for such a long time had created a mutual attraction, somewhat like gravity, between the two. The Doctor abandoned the thought that he had a greater tie to the primitive planet.

AD 34, Jerusalem. A time of great unrest, not least because one particular group of _dissenters_ (the Doctor well understood their stance, having been considered a renegade at one or two points in his lives himself) had in the death of their leader found a new inspiration. The Doctor would have preferred, perhaps, a year earlier, so he could investigate for himself that death and supposed resurrection – but even he knew that there were some things which one just didn't meddle with.

But there was more than just civil unrest, the Doctor noted as he slipped into the crowds and strode through the teeming streets. He could smell it on the air, or rather sense it with a seventh sense that was more like smell than anything else. Spatial – or even temporal? – displacement. Undoubtedly mystery, danger and a saving-the-world situation.

The Doctor grinned. He felt wonderfully at home.

888

It took him a while to track down the source of the disturbance, but when he did, he felt a thrill of both fear and delight.

"Old friends," he murmured, "or rather, new ones."

For when the Doctor had first encountered the Silurians, it had been in their future. But that did not explain why they, the predecessors to Earth's humans, could possibly be the cause of a spatial disturbance. Unless these Silurian's were not _of_ Earth.

They were in the caves not far from the city, hiding out and preparing, it seemed to the Doctor, for some sort of... siege. That was it. They were stocking food, water...

"Sorry!" The Doctor suddenly exclaimed, as he almost trod on a man who had been bending down in the grass. He frowned. "What on earth are you doing down there?" He had felt tempted to insert a different planet-name in place of Earth, but decided the disgruntled-looking older gent might not get the joke.

"I was praying." He said tightly. "And you? Surely you have a reason for wandering round the tombs at evening-fall?"

The Doctor glanced around.

"The tombs... oh, the tombs! So that's what these are. Should've known, really, with those big rocks over the entrances to most of the caves..." he looked at the nearest one, with its stone dislodged, and added helpfully; "but this one's empty."

The man raised an eyebrow.

"My point exactly." And with that, he strode away, leaving the Doctor staring at the empty tomb. After a long moment, once the man was out of earshot, he let out a laugh.

"The empty tomb. He is not here, he is risen..." Then he stopped. The Silurians were, in _his_ history, dead, destroyed by the Brigadier in an impulsive act of defence (why did he not condemn his friend for that genocide, as he had Harriet Jones at the killing of the Sicorax? Perhaps age had hardened him), and at this time in _Earth_ history should not even be awake... and certainly not in Jerusalem. "They survived. And now they rise again." Could they be a threat? Were they now at a point where they thought they could take over the Earth which was rightfully theirs, at a time in Earth's history when defence was made up of little more than swords and bows and arrows?

There was only one way to find out. The Doctor, his eyes bright with relish, looked around to ensure no one was watching and strode into the empty tomb.

888

The Silurians were certainly not alone. Their technology, ingenious though it was, could certainly not have formed the sharp, clinical edges to the tunnels which the Doctor now entered. As a matter of fact, he found something repulsive about the unnaturally smooth edges – the Silurians had lived in natural caves when the Doctor knew them, it was their habitat, and yet now...

"Humanoids, by the shape of the tunnels," he murmured, almost expecting Rose, or Grace, or Peri, or Adric to respond, contradicting him or adding to his ideas more weight. Rose had always known what to say; she had been the perfect sounding-board, but also a perfect judge of a situation, however alien, in her own right. Was this why he always surrounded himself with other beings? It was then that the Doctor admitted to himself that he was, quite simply, bored. After nine-hundred years of space and time travel, he still could not bear to be alone with his silence. And the TARDIS, for all her qualities as a wonderful listener, could never answer back.

"I am _bored_, Rose!" He exclaimed, wondering if she would hear the echo of his words in that other dimension in which she now lived. But then his sixth or seventh sense (he could never tell which), the one which had kept him alive – or at least kept him from dying _too_ many times – over the years, caused him to stop quite still. He was not alone in that cave.

"I am afraid I know no-one by the name of Rose," the voice murmured, its sibilant tones slithering towards him and causing him to shiver, "but I am quite happy to say I am in a position to add a little bit of interest to your life... _Doctor_."

The Doctor turned around very slowly, and stared into eyes he thought were long dead.

"_You_?"

888

The Doctor stepped into a room full of artefacts from his home planet. The seal of Rassilon was engraved above the door, and parts of TARDISes – chameleon circuits, advanced homing beacons, nuclear patches – lay strewn across a table hewn carefully and mechanically out of the shining black rock. Five Timelords, leaders of Gallifrey, stood at the other end of the room, their interminable gazes fixed upon the new addition to their group.

It was all a lie. He spun round to face the alien who had led him to the room of ghosts.

"You are not the Master." The Doctor said, "he died long ago, before even the rest of the Timelords..." he trailed off, and began to circle the room. "So what are you?"

He went to pick up one of the artefacts, but the five figures at the back of the room stepped forward. When he lowered his hand, they retreated. He laughed.

"What, do you think I'll break them?" He looked at the nearest object, a broken chameleon circuit, and noted the blackened edges and the frayed wiring. Somehow, just like him, they had survived the Time War. "So you're scavengers." He said. "Collectors. Somehow, now I don't know how, but I will soon, you can take the shape of _people I recognise_, which means that not only are you shape shifters, you must also have some sort of telepathic abilities. The tunnels prove that you're architects, mathematicians -" he snapped his fingers, grinning, at the surly and silent aliens. "You're Rijians! From, oh, Galaxy 15xD? Rather clinical, I must say, giving your own galaxy nothing more than a _number_... but, fancy seeing you here! It's a small universe, isn't it?" And the Doctor gave them his brightest grin, and even as he did their shapes began to blur a little. He nodded with satisfaction.

"Of course," he added, "it does help somewhat that your disguises begin to fade once one of your... _subjects_ becomes aware that a disguise is all your appearance is."

The Rijian who had for but a few moments fooled him into thinking it was the Master raised a single silky eyebrow.

"Intriguing." It said. "As you note, we are but – scientists. You are wiser and quicker than many, Timelord... and yet our shape does not change. Why?"

The Doctor was tempted to bristle at the slightly mocking tone in his host's voice, were it not for the fact that the cold and calculating shape-shifter would see it as little more than a weakness. The Rijians were the perfect scientists – they did just repress their emotions; they didn't have any to start with. The pursuit of knowledge and information was the only thing which warmed the chameleon-like liquid from which they were formed.

"Because you wish to believe," the Rijian said calmly upon the Doctor's silence, "that we are who we pretend to be." He cocked his head to one side. "Or would you rather we took the form of... Rose?"

The Rijians, for a species who knew no emotion other than triumph or investigative excitement, certainly knew how to twist the emotions of other species. The Doctor felt a cold fury rising up inside of him, until he realised that his fury was exactly what the Rijians wanted. It would cloud his judgement, when against these master thinkers he needed every scrap of intellect and logic he could collect.

It was at that point that a Silurian entered the room, its dark, reptilian eyes fixed with a strange curiosity upon the Doctor.

"You are the Doctor?" He asked, and as the Doctor shifted his attention from the Rijians who looked like his own people, their form finally changed. They became formless and colourless, but still visible.

"That's me." The Doctor said. He did not recognise this particular Silurian, but then again it was hard to tell the difference between one set of scales and another. The Rijians did not interfere – they were quite happy simply to watch, observe, and glean what understanding they could from the conversation.

"Many things are spoken of you, Doctor." The Silurian said.

"Should I be flattered?"

"They say it was you who caused the wipe-out." The Silurian finished, undaunted by the Doctor's interruption.

"That – wait, you can speak English?" He glanced at the Rijians, their true form now fully visible. "And since when could you travel through time?"

The Rijian's response was decidedly smug.

"We studied you."

"Ah." The Doctor began to shift slowly towards the door. "In fact, I think – I'd better be off."

"No." The Silurian barred the way, and the Doctor stepped back, arms folded.

"Right." He turned to the Rijian. "Well, since we seem to have time to chat, will you tell me why you have chosen this time, why the Silurians, and _why Earth?_ In fact, why are you bothering about conquest at all if you are, as you claim, but humble scientists? Unless..." the Doctor trailed off, a thought striking him. "Oh, yes. It's just a big experiment, isn't it, and the Silurians, you're -"

"It served us little to let them die." The Rijian said, interrupting. "We were on Earth at the time, investigating, and we detected the build-up to the explosion. We had never studied the Silurians, and so collected as many as we could for study. When we discovered the tears in Time left by your Time War we used the energy of one to return to this place and time, which we thought a prodigious time to study due to its lack of technology, and the Silurians thought an opportunity to re-populate the Earth. As an aside," and the Rijian sounded infuriatingly like an overly-pompous science lecturer "the humans are a most fascinating race."

"But..." the Doctor looked at the Rijian, appalled, "the tear would only bring you one way. What about your family? Your home, in your own time?"

There was a pause.

"Do they matter?" The Rijian asked. At the Doctor's silence, he spoke again. "We do not intend to allow the Silurians to interfere with Earth's development. We will return them to their stasis, and they will waken at the set time as they had always planned. This way their race will survive."

The Doctor frowned. The Timelords had respected the Rijian species as fairly capable (though not, of course, quite equal to the pride of Gallifrey), and so had not studied them in any great length, and the Doctor himself had never encountered them on his... travels. He could not, strangely, get the measure of them.

"That's compassionate of you." He commented, and the Rijian cocked its head to one side with a faintly accusatory air.

"No. It is as it should be."

And the Doctor felt a stab of guilt once more, guilt which found him through the mist of six lives and still found him responsible for a genocide he had no control over. As alien as he was to all he met, his hearts were still as hard to fathom as those of human beings – of any species.

"And you? You can't..." Another thought struck him with another dose of guilt, but this guilt was larger; the guilt of a War which still wreaked havoc. He'd thought moments like this had been left with his ninth incarnation, back on the . . .station. "You can't get back. The tears, the rips in time, are only one way, though I can't think how you managed to figure out what time you were headed to anyway, but -" he stopped. The Rijian was a neutral grey colour, a sign even he knew in his limited experience of them to be a sign of a complete lack of _caring_. The Rijians changed colour (when in their _own_ form) according to their emotions. The Doctor guessed they didn't change colour very often.

"But what?" The Rijian asked calmly. "Home, time, family, it does not matter – not when there is knowledge."

The Doctor was disgusted.

"You know, I hate to use a science fiction cliché – but you really are a Spock, aren't you? How can you not care about – about _family?_ What about the people you love?"

_And, hallelujah, I manage to sound like an extra in a bad soap. How many more references to bad Earth entertainment are we going to manage today? It must be Rose's influence on me..._

The thought struck him short and like a ton of bricks – the realisation, once again, of her undeniable _absence_ – but for once gave him something a little like his old strength. Because he knew these... _creatures_ would quite happily live alone, without a companion, without any roses to bring colour to their experiences.

"You care about home, Timelord? How can you? Your home is gone."

"That shows," the Doctor said, edging towards the door, "what you know about home." And he twisted his sonic screwdriver which he had brought behind his back and let it shrill out a whine at the exact setting which immobilised both the Rijians (by temporarily liquidising their inter-changeable molecular structure) and the Silurians (who, like dogs, were especially sensitive to high-frequency waves) just long enough to allow him to slip – or rather, run – out of the cave and into the quickly darkening day outside.

He slowed to a brisk walk and happily replaced the sonic screwdriver in his pocket.

"A multi-effective frequency! Aren't I fantastic?"

But there was no-one, only an empty tomb, to say it to.

888

The TARDIS was waiting for him. He wrenched the take-off lever as fast as he could, feeling strangely like a child terrified by the bite of an until-then friendly pet animal which nonetheless retained its wildness. He hoped he would never see the Rijians again. They were the very anathema of all he lived for – and reminded him rather too much of the Timelords who he so foolishly mourned.

_My family,_ he thought, _a family who exiled me, and yet I mourn them. But what of Rose? Of Adric? Of Sarah-Jane whom **I** left, not understanding, not realising what I had done in leaving her without the goodbye she needed to hear? Which family are the greater, and which deserves the greater remembrance?_

But no heart, not even Gallifreyan ones, worked like that. Every heart is difficult to fathom, except perhaps creatures like the Rijians, whose hearts were pure and predictable science. Perhaps that was why he didn't like them – because they did not follow the same rules as almost every other sentient species in the known galaxies. They were worse than the Daleks, because unlike the Daleks they knew what emotion was and _could_ understand it, but chose to remain aloof from it. The Daleks were mutants; they could not help what they were. The Rijians could.

_Is that sympathy? For the **Daleks**?_

The Doctor shook his head.

"I'm tired, old girl," he said at last, watching the rise and fall of the TARDIS' motor. "Aren't you?"

The TARDIS was silent, but it was not an unresponsive silence. She, too, was the last of her kind. But the TARDIS, for all her empathy, was a machine, and was programmed to be quite content with just one Timelord inside of her. But when that Timelord was not himself content...

"Alright!" He said, as he felt a wave of disapproval and encouragement which was _certainly_ not his own. The TARDIS rarely did _that_ – make him feel her emotions. She was usually satisfied with a rumble or two. "I know. Time to stop moping. Because not even _I_ have limitless time."

And so, to pacify both his TARDIS and his own lonely soul, the Doctor turned to the TARDIS monitor, and with a few brushes of the keyboard identified at least five possible spatial disturbances in and around the 21st century, Rose's time. Only one of these was on Earth. A hospital in London was experiencing... odd weather. He felt the first rush of excitement, and didn't even bother to wonder if the excitement was his own or the TARDIS'.

"Well then," he said, pulling the lever down and feeling a grin spread across his face, "let's see what's going on..."

If the TARDIS rarely interfered with his emotions, if not his destination, then for her to speak was ever rarer. But she spoke, in his mind, in the tongue of his home and of at least one of his hearts;

_Good, Doctor._

A day later he was back in the TARDIS with a new companion who, if she wasn't quite Rose, was still a very good 'Martha Jones' in her own right.

_"D'you need a test to fly this thing?"_

_"Yes, and I failed!"_

She couldn't replace Rose, of course. But then again Rose could never have replaced Grace, and in turn none of his companions who he so needed could never have replaced another. They simply _were_, as Martha Jones simply _was_. He could have found worse.

A new chapter, like a new life, had begun.

888

**A/N:** Please press that nice lilac button and tell me what you think!


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